(no subject)
Happy Easter!
Easter, of course, was a goddess long before the Christians arrived on the scene. Easter, Eostre, Ostara, Astarte, Ishtar, Asherah: Cognates of her name in many languages, used for many centuries from Asia Minor to northern Europe. She shares aspects and stories with more goddesses that don't share her name: Inanna, Aphrodite, Venus, Hathor. She was the goddess of love and fertility and the mysteries of new life and rebirth for untold millions of people, and now she's almost forgotten.
Of course, every time and every tribe had a different version, gods adapt to what their people need, especially in non-literate societies. Tribes steal each other's gods all the time, file the serial numbers off, put 'em up on the altar, and a sexy badass goddess is always good for the target demographic. Sometimes she's a muddy rut-goddess, sometimes a mysterious queen of heaven, sometimes a respected member of a proper aristocratic pantheon, modestly draped in layer upon layer of fabric.
Still, though, some recognizeable core remains. She is the identity our ancestors (well, assuming you're of European or Middle Eastern descent, but let's not get into that) gave to the mystery of sex, to the magic that happens to the germinating seed hidden deep within the earth, or hidden inside the shell of the egg, or deep in the belly of a woman. These are powerful, fundamental mysteries, necessary for life itself. From them comes all the bounty of the harvest, all the life that populates the future.
She is also the mystery of the serpent that sheds its own skin and is reborn, shiny and new, or the caterpillar that enters a chrysalis and emerges as a butterfly, unrecognizably different but essentially the same.
It might be worth noting that that's exactly the sort of goddess you want on your side if you've been hung on a holy tree until you die, and now you want to be buried in a dark, damp, womb cave so you, too, can be reborn. You know, like Odin, or Horus, or Krishna (in some versions), or Pales, or... wait, wasn't there some other pagan god that did that too? It's on the tip of my tongue...
It gets better. In old, old versions of the story of Adam and Eve, it's Asherah who gives the fruit of knowledge to mankind. There's a lot of conflicting discussion of this on the internet, and I can't find a satisfactory primary source, so some of this may be bullshit, but I'm forging ahead. It doesn't matter exactly what the knowledge was, or what the tree signified, it's knowledge and that's always a good thing.
See, this is where I disagree with the big 3 monotheistic religions. Everybody says that leaving the garden was a fall, was a loss, was somehow a bad thing. And I can see why some would say that, sure, but I don't buy it. If you assume, like I do, that the story is a metaphor and we didn't literally lose access to a supernatural slice of real estate where nobody aged or suffered or died, then knowledge is better than any alternative. The garden, the "state of grace," is innocence, and innocence is just ignorance, and I'd always rather know stuff, even if it makes me sad and fucks me up.
Or, to put it another way, the garden is stasis, existing to exist, reacting but not acting. Knowledge is the mystery of inspiration, of creation, of imagination. We don't know how it happens because it's inside the black box of our brain, hidden from view behind the sturdy eggshell of the skull. That does sound like the goddess's purview now, huh?
I guess my point is, if I'm a grungy hunter-gatherer, and the goddess of fertility and creation (the workaday, small-c creation, that is) offers me the fruit of knowledge, I won't hesitate. I'll munch that fucker, swallow the seeds, kiss her feet in gratitude, and go down to the mesopotamian mudflats and build myself a fucking civilization. That's progress, baby! I'm in! Even with all the downsides and pitfalls, let's keep making that new thing.
(It might be an interesting digression to discuss how because of all this human progress stuff, now we have science and we CAN see into the germinating seed and the fertilizing egg and whatnot, so the mysteries I talked about before aren't mysteries any more, but that's enough on the subject for now)
So, have fun today, if you're inclined. Paint eggs, eat chocolate, maybe even fuck like bunnies, it's all good. Go to church if you're into it, or nosh a little matzoh, but maybe also take a minute to remember the goddess and the hidden magic that makes life possible. Embrace the mystery, let the magic happen, bring something new into the world.
Happy Easter.
Easter, of course, was a goddess long before the Christians arrived on the scene. Easter, Eostre, Ostara, Astarte, Ishtar, Asherah: Cognates of her name in many languages, used for many centuries from Asia Minor to northern Europe. She shares aspects and stories with more goddesses that don't share her name: Inanna, Aphrodite, Venus, Hathor. She was the goddess of love and fertility and the mysteries of new life and rebirth for untold millions of people, and now she's almost forgotten.
Of course, every time and every tribe had a different version, gods adapt to what their people need, especially in non-literate societies. Tribes steal each other's gods all the time, file the serial numbers off, put 'em up on the altar, and a sexy badass goddess is always good for the target demographic. Sometimes she's a muddy rut-goddess, sometimes a mysterious queen of heaven, sometimes a respected member of a proper aristocratic pantheon, modestly draped in layer upon layer of fabric.
Still, though, some recognizeable core remains. She is the identity our ancestors (well, assuming you're of European or Middle Eastern descent, but let's not get into that) gave to the mystery of sex, to the magic that happens to the germinating seed hidden deep within the earth, or hidden inside the shell of the egg, or deep in the belly of a woman. These are powerful, fundamental mysteries, necessary for life itself. From them comes all the bounty of the harvest, all the life that populates the future.
She is also the mystery of the serpent that sheds its own skin and is reborn, shiny and new, or the caterpillar that enters a chrysalis and emerges as a butterfly, unrecognizably different but essentially the same.
It might be worth noting that that's exactly the sort of goddess you want on your side if you've been hung on a holy tree until you die, and now you want to be buried in a dark, damp, womb cave so you, too, can be reborn. You know, like Odin, or Horus, or Krishna (in some versions), or Pales, or... wait, wasn't there some other pagan god that did that too? It's on the tip of my tongue...
It gets better. In old, old versions of the story of Adam and Eve, it's Asherah who gives the fruit of knowledge to mankind. There's a lot of conflicting discussion of this on the internet, and I can't find a satisfactory primary source, so some of this may be bullshit, but I'm forging ahead. It doesn't matter exactly what the knowledge was, or what the tree signified, it's knowledge and that's always a good thing.
See, this is where I disagree with the big 3 monotheistic religions. Everybody says that leaving the garden was a fall, was a loss, was somehow a bad thing. And I can see why some would say that, sure, but I don't buy it. If you assume, like I do, that the story is a metaphor and we didn't literally lose access to a supernatural slice of real estate where nobody aged or suffered or died, then knowledge is better than any alternative. The garden, the "state of grace," is innocence, and innocence is just ignorance, and I'd always rather know stuff, even if it makes me sad and fucks me up.
Or, to put it another way, the garden is stasis, existing to exist, reacting but not acting. Knowledge is the mystery of inspiration, of creation, of imagination. We don't know how it happens because it's inside the black box of our brain, hidden from view behind the sturdy eggshell of the skull. That does sound like the goddess's purview now, huh?
I guess my point is, if I'm a grungy hunter-gatherer, and the goddess of fertility and creation (the workaday, small-c creation, that is) offers me the fruit of knowledge, I won't hesitate. I'll munch that fucker, swallow the seeds, kiss her feet in gratitude, and go down to the mesopotamian mudflats and build myself a fucking civilization. That's progress, baby! I'm in! Even with all the downsides and pitfalls, let's keep making that new thing.
(It might be an interesting digression to discuss how because of all this human progress stuff, now we have science and we CAN see into the germinating seed and the fertilizing egg and whatnot, so the mysteries I talked about before aren't mysteries any more, but that's enough on the subject for now)
So, have fun today, if you're inclined. Paint eggs, eat chocolate, maybe even fuck like bunnies, it's all good. Go to church if you're into it, or nosh a little matzoh, but maybe also take a minute to remember the goddess and the hidden magic that makes life possible. Embrace the mystery, let the magic happen, bring something new into the world.
Happy Easter.